


Discourse of My Dear Faith

by voleuse



Category: Slings and Arrows
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-21
Updated: 2007-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Be clamorous and leap all civil bounds rather than make unprofited return.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Discourse of My Dear Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Set between S1 and S2. Title and summary adapted from Shakespeare's _Twelfth Night_.

It was two in the morning, and Geoffrey had trapped Maria in the theatre for the sake of a fucking thought experiment.

"Seriously, Geoffrey," she said, pitching her voice to emerge from the confines of her scarf, "are we doing _Twelfth Night_ or not?"

"No," Geoffrey said, definitively. "We're doing _Macbeth_."

"Then why are we--"

"It boggles me," Geoffrey interrupted, "the way Oliver used to stage this play. Why have the letter scene dancing about a forest?"

"Because he loved using trees?"

"Ha!" Geoffrey paced the full length of the stage, and where he got the energy, she could never guess. "Doesn't it seem counterproductive?"

"It's a bitch to light, that's for sure." Maria could see it in her mind, the mad shuffle the actors had done, and the strut Peter had used as he stomped around, intoning.

"Exactly!" Geoffrey almost leaped from the stage in his excitement. "Exactly, Maria, and it served no purpose except to show the audience how _original_ Oliver was being." He flapped his arms high, incensed. "And they ate it up!"

Maria nodded. "Even though it pulled away from the text."

"And _that_," Geoffrey said, pointing his arm like a herald, "is why I love you, Maria." Dodging around the imagined trunks of paper-mâché, he proclaimed, "'I may command where I adore.'"

Maria snorted. "And he could never hit his mark for M, O, A, I."

"Because there were too many fucking trees!"

"And the rose bush," Maria remembered.

"And the trellis!"

"Fucking foliage."

"Exactly!" Geoffrey repeated, shouting until the rafters echoed. "Exactly, Maria!"

She sat up. "So what would you do?"

He pulled up short from his pacing, then spun in the center of the stage. He walked in a circle, mumbling to himself for so long that Maria started considering how _she_ would stage it. Preferably with an amber wash, and no forest. Maybe a garden scene instead, with a single bench. She'd keep the trellis to signify the garden, but the rose bush was a pain in the ass, and all the trees did was clutter--

"Columns," Geoffrey decided aloud. "Columns, and a wild hedge."

The picture in Maria's mind faded back, and she slumped. "Are we doing this play next season or not?"

"No." Geoffrey paused. "Maybe."

"God," Maria responded.

And Nahum popped out from the trap door.


End file.
